Monday 2 March 2009

Wotlk Paladin Tanking Guide part 3: Glyphs

by Flyingfish

A newer version of this part can be found at: Wotlk Paladin Tanking Guide part 2: Talents (Patch 3.1)
Which glyphs to use when tanking?
I feel protection paladin don't have as many choices when it comes to glyphs as for instance protection warriors, meaning a couple of glyphs are decent for us, and the rest are like "meh". The following I will use the same coloring system as I used with talents (see part 2 of my guide), so a glyph name in purple indicates that I think it is very good for tanking, not that the glyph itself is an epic quality item, as all glyphs have common (white) item quality. Remember again, the score is based on my personal experience and opinion only.

Major glyphs
Glyph of Seal of Vengeance
As Seal of Vengeance/Corruption is considered the main tanking seal, this glyph is very good to use when tanking. Note it grants 10 expertise skill, not rating!

Glyph of Righteous Defense
A missed Righteous Defense can have very serious consequences, even though it doesn't occur often. This glyph greatly increases the hit chance of RD, thus almost eliminites wipes caused by a missed taunt. But with the introduction of Hand of Reckoning, we now have two taunt spells, making this glyph less useful.

Glyph of Judgement
10% increase to Judgement damage is not much, but then again we should be using our Judgements whenever they have cooled down.

Glyph of Spiritual Attunement
If you constantly find youself OOM, this glyph can help you. But there are so many other ways to solve mana problems, such as Seal/Judgement of Wisdom, Blessing of Sancturay/Wisdom, Divine Plea and so on, I will not recommand this glyph.

Glyph of Avenger's Shield
I will not recommand this glyph either. It is good if you are only tanking one mob at a time, but that is not our niche. Most of the time, a protection paladin should find him/herself shinning in front of a group of monsters.

Glyph of Seal of Righteousness
The cost of Judgement spells are very cheap, it's simply just not worth a major glyph spot.

Glyph of Consecration
I have seen some tanks with this glyph, I guess they don't use the 96969 rotation, because increasing the cooldown of Consecration to 10 seconds will totally mess up the rotation.

Glyph of Exorcism
Since Exorcism can be cast on all types of enemy targets now, this glyph will give paladins another hard hitting spell interrupting ability with 15 seconds cooldown only, sadly this overpowered combo will be changed in the next patch.

Minor glyphs
Since the buffing should be done out of combat, the three minor glyphs of blessings are pretty much useless. That leave us Glyph of Sense Undead, Glyph of Lay on Hands and Glyph of the Wise, why not use them? They are better than nothing.

Conclusion
Choosing glyphs for a paladin tank is boring, because there is only a few variations. Lets hope Blizzard will give us some new glyphs in the future. I think I'll cover itemization in the next part of this guide, but I'm not sure yet, but stay tuned anyway :)

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